1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a communications network, and more specifically to the restoration of network resource from network failure.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a communications network, it is the usual practice to multiplex signals for a particular destination into a single multiplex signal and transmit it over a physical or virtual path that is established between two terminal (i.e., end) nodes. The traffic carried by the path may include data signals for inter-bank transactions that require a high recovery speed with which they are protection-switched to a spare path, and others that do not require such high speed recovery performance and allow a delay of as long as a few seconds. Since the fault recovery speed of a network path is usually matched to the high speed restoration requirement of the signals it carries and high-speed restoration performance requires an extra cost or investment, it is not economically advantageous to multiplex low-speed requirement signals with high-speed requirement signals onto a network path to allow the former to share high cost restoration facilities with the latter.